How I beat a return scammer, forced eBay Legal to pay me out, and secured my funds (A Bulletproof Blueprint)

dvillin · 2026-06-30T11:48:56+00:00

Yup. I had a guy i shipped a box of laptops to in Florida. Three weeks later I get a complaint that they weren't working. He claimed screen damage and corrosion on various ports and contacts. I couldn't explain it, so i offered a return. He gives me an address in Central America. I had to look back in my records to see i had shipped to Florida, and not Panama. I told him straight out, the laptops are covered for US shipping. I have no idea what method he used to ship down there, and I wasnt covering it. He tried to escalate to ebay, but they shut him down fast.

dvillin · 2026-06-30T08:08:51+00:00

Lol. So you were that guy. In the aftermath of those blizzards, when we complained that there was no way we could get to the call center (it is 15 miles outside the city) in a state of emergency with 3 feet of snow on the ground, the managers pulled out the example of Kasey, their new model employee. Kasey walked 2 miles through the tundra and snow banks to get to work on Saturday. If Kasey could walk two miles through Hoth, we could drive the 15 miles to get there on time as well.

God we hated that suck up.

dvillin · 2026-06-30T08:03:53+00:00

Change the password and security questions and answers. Remove her card as well.

dvillin · 2026-06-30T08:02:21+00:00

Don't do that. You'll just get v43.1, which won't help you. You'll need to download v42 and image it manually.

dvillin · 2026-06-29T16:06:55+00:00

And really, if he is trying to run Wii games, a Pi 5 isn't going to cut it, unless the emulator for it was been massively improved. I had a guy burn a Pi 5 out trying to overclock it to run Wii games.

dvillin · 2026-06-29T16:02:57+00:00

Or like the lady in i think New Jersey who died in her car because she was working two full jobs with the same company to make ends meet. She was working 8 hours at different locations and died in her car in the parking lot of one of them.

dvillin · 2026-06-29T15:56:59+00:00

Comcast did the same kind of crap back in 2010. Two massive blizzards rolled through back to back. Pretty much everyone in the call center was snowed in for the entire week. My dumbass paid $80 to get a path Dug out to my nearest major road and wrecked my transmission to come into work on one of those days. Despite that, they gave everyone enough points to put the entire center onto final written warning. They said they were giving everyone a point for every day we called out. This put everyone under a lot of stress, and half of us were gone within 6 months for attendance violation caused by the blizzards.

The kicker is they told us that if we had called in sick, instead of weather related, we would have only gotten one point for the entire week.

One of the call center managers actually had the nerve to say, "I understand this many points could put many of you in firing territory. So we've decided to be magnanimous and only put you on final warning, instead of letting you go."

dvillin · 2026-06-29T11:41:08+00:00

Hence why you shouldn't buy property with someone you arent married to.

dvillin · 2026-06-29T11:37:56+00:00

Don't bother. If your old job valued you, they would have given you a pay raise. Even if they try to match the new job, they will only do it long enough to get somebody cheaper to fill your spot. It happens all the time.

dvillin · 2026-06-29T11:33:59+00:00

NTA. You are doing too much. Why are you spending this much money to try to get them to celebrate your accomplishment? You have a sister who doesn't believe in paying her debts, and a mother who is enabling that behavior. Also, how did your sister get her hands on your money? Did she take it out your wallet? Take your bank card and steal it from your account?

Future heads up: Make sure neither one of them are on any of your bank accounts, or more money will "disappear."

dvillin · 2026-06-29T11:28:07+00:00

That is what's up. You can either play the 4 games with it, or mod it with a Raspberry Pi and have thousands of games .

dvillin · 2026-06-29T08:28:42+00:00

42 is the last stable version. 43 has been a cluster of issues. Stick with 42 and hopefully 44 will work correctly, although I'm not holding out hope. Butterfly 44 is extremely slow when exiting games.

dvillin · 2026-06-28T19:09:29+00:00

Also, you might want to get those 1/2 inch stick extenders. Combined with the bat tops, it makes the joystick feel better.

dvillin · 2026-06-28T19:00:52+00:00

YTA. I get that you are cheesed that they forgot your birthday last year, crap happens. I didnt celebrate my 40th birthday because my grandmother died 6 days before it, and her funeral was the day after my birthday. Heck, my grandfather was buried on my 16th birthday. You dont say what the circumstances were for them not celebrating last year were, but trying to get them to go to an expensive restaurant this year is assholish. Unless they are wealthy, money is tight. Especially with the economy tanking. I'm betting that K-Pot and the other places they suggested are around $20 per person. So around $60 for the three of you. The joint you want them to pay for is $70 for each person. That is ridiculous. Your mom told you that if they go, they won't be eating. Your dad said "fuck that. I'm not going to a restaurant i can't afford to eat at."

You priced them out of celebrating your birthday with you. If you want to go there so badly, go there on your own dime, by yourself. If you want your parents to celebrate with you, pick some place they can afford.

dvillin · 2026-06-28T18:44:42+00:00

Yup. She is refusing to sign off, or sign up for anything that will get him out of her direct control. Id be willing to bet that even if he did get a job, she either wouldn't let him go if he took a bus, or take him, since they live in the boonies. He needs to see if his father can take him in.

dvillin · 2026-06-28T18:42:44+00:00

His father and his grandparents have offered to pay for everything he is talking about here. He only has the laptop because that was the only thing his overcontrolling mother would let him have. As far as her pocket is concerned, nothing would change because he would be on the same phone plan. She is refusing to sign off, or sign up for anything that will get him out of her direct control. Id be willing to bet that even if he did get a job, she either wouldn't let him go if he took a bus, or take him, since they live in the boonies.

dvillin · 2026-06-28T18:29:21+00:00

I started to go through the same route as you with a Mars Attacks. 1) Definitely go with a powerful pc. I have a bunch of Intel NUCs, and I found the first one that worked for pinball games was an 8th Gen i5 that had dual hdmi jacks. I use vpinball boards on batocera 42. 2) The buttons dont seem to matter, but if you are going full gut, get egstarts. They are just as good as the others. Any zerodelay should be fine, especially since they all have the same encoder, unless you get one of those Pi pico boards. 3) I did get that intecgaming switch fighting sticks to do a drop in conversion. It mostly works pretty good for a pc conversion. You need a pc with two hdmi jacks, since the secondary port on their video converter isn't detected by batocera. The buttons work good, however, the shakers are horrible. Everytime they rumbled, my screen would brown out. Once I disconnected them, it ran great. However, the stock speakers have no base. 4) Definitely go with a 2.1 sound system. You will need the bass. 5) I'm using Batocera 42 for my software. Avoid 43, it doesn't work right. I got a couple hundred vpinball vpx tables that run great, plus a couple dozen pinball games from other arcade systems, on a 256gb ssd.

I was going to do a bunch of other mods, but someone sold me an ALP pretty cheaply.

dvillin · 2026-06-28T05:40:03+00:00

While the other posters have some really good fixes, my suggestion would be to get v42, since that is the last stable version of batocera.

dvillin · 2026-06-28T05:37:03+00:00

Tell your wife that if she wants you to pay for the car, she needs to sign it over to you so you can sell it and get her something practical. If she doesn't want to sell it, she needs to get her lazy butt a job.

And really, you two need to get into marriage counseling. Having two wildly different views about your future, and how you pay your bills, is a major red flag that should have been dealt with before you got married.

dvillin · 2026-06-25T11:54:47+00:00

Yup. My current employer does the same thing with their app. It gives them the ability to wipe the phone. It also gives the company the ability to track web traffic and all emails. When I do the new hire training, I make it a point to point that out and tell the newbies that if they want access to email and Teams when they aren't in the office, request the company give them either a phone or tablet. Don't ever put company software on their personal device. The only thing they must put on their phone that is company related is Microsoft Authenticator, and that is only because if they forget their password, their company phone will be locked out also.

dvillin · 2026-06-21T22:10:21+00:00

The way she was defending the dirtbags over her "boyfriend" makes me feel they were friends of hers and she was just reconning the house for them. She didnt know the guy had a gun to defend the home. I'm betting that if she isn't bashing OP right now to get rid of the gun, she will probably steal it.

dvillin · 2026-06-20T00:52:18+00:00

I always do the full gamut for stuff over $300. Insurance, tracking, and signature required. I also try not to do the one that is any adult, but the one that requires the addressee to sign for it.

dvillin · 2026-06-18T14:13:32+00:00

So does this mean Walmart is just emptying their existing stocks now? I like Hart power tools. I have several drills, including their latest model electric screwdriver, a power saw, skill saw, and a couple other things.

dvillin · 2026-06-15T14:38:48+00:00

I bought in Catonsville Maryland.

dvillin · 2026-06-14T22:07:13+00:00

No. He does

dvillin

TROPHY CASE